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'This stunning story collection includes two prize-winning novellas along with an impressive range of historical and contemporary stories, all written by characters who yearn to belong and find acceptance.
'From the award-winning author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain come these superbly crafted stories that explore the inner lives of those who are often ignored or misunderstood.
'We follow a migrant mother who yearns to feel welcomed at a kids' party in a local park; a young skateboarder caught between showing loyalty and being accepted; and an Indonesian maid working far from home who longs for the son she's left behind. Bookending this collection are two stunning novellas: Annah the Javanese re-imagines the world of one of Paul Gauguin's models in nineteenth-century Paris, while the highly acclaimed The Fish Girl reworks a classic W Somerset Maugham story from the perspective of a young Indonesian woman.
'With rich emotional insight and a light touch, these wide-ranging stories reveal hidden desires and human fragility.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Dedication: For Laura
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Epigraph:
Mistake me not for my complexion,
The shadow'd livery of the burnish'd sun.The Prince of Morroco
The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 1
William Shakespeare
Contents
- Annah the Javanese, single work novella (p. 1-62)
- Invitation, single work short story (p. 63-74)
- Hardflip, single work short story (p. 75-92)
- Hazel, single work short story (p. 93-100)
- Dignity, single work short story (p. 101-116)
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Growth,
single work
short story
'It lies on the crisp hospital sheet, absolutely grotesque. Dr Arnold tells us it's called a fetus in few. Our son's unformed twin. Most likely joined via the umbilical cord in gestation, now just a jumble of elephantine bone and skin, about the size of an apricot. Three canines — there's no denying they're teeth — protrude in a jagged line across its circumference. When we first saw it after the operation there was a shock of hair pressed to its side, still moist from having Thomas's stomach juices washed away. It looked like the slick of hair and scum drawn from a shower's plughole. I gagged, felt nausea water my mouth. But the hair, the colour of wheat and nearly ten centimetres long, is dry now, almost glossy. It looks like her hair. Like Hannah's. ' (120)
- Cinta Ku, single work short story (p. 127-138)
- She Is Ruby Wong, single work short story (p. 139-158)
- Mind Full, single work short story (p. 159-170)
- What Would Kim Do?, single work short story (p. 171-180)
- So Many Ways, single work short story (p. 181-194)
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The Fish Girl,
single work
novella
'Sparked by the description of a 'Malay trollope' in W. Somerset Maugham's story, The Four Dutchmen, Mirandi Riwoe's novella, The Fish Girl tells of an Indonesian girl whose life is changed irrevocably when she moves from a small fishing village to work in the house of a Dutch merchant. There she finds both hardship and tenderness as her traditional past and colonial present collide.
'Told with an exquisitely restrained voice and coloured with lush description, this moving book will stay with you long after the last page.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Best of 2022 in Australian Reading
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2023;
— Review of This All Come Back Now 2022 anthology short story ; Unlimited Futures 2022 anthology short story ; An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life 2022 selected work short story ; Women I Know 2022 selected work short story ; Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls 2022 selected work short story ; Everything Feels like the End of the World 2022 selected work short story ; The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story ; This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel ; Losing Face 2022 single work novel ; Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay ; People Who Lunch : Essays on Work, Leisure and Loose Living 2022 selected work essay ; The Diplomat 2022 single work novel -
The Darkness That Lurks
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story -
What I Wish I’d Known About: Studying Creative Writing
2022
single work
essay
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , June 2022; -
Restless Invention : Three Powerful New Short Story Collections
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June no. 443 2022; (p. 31-32)
— Review of The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story ; Danged Black Thing 2021 selected work short story ; Sadvertising 2022 selected work short story'The Burnished Sun by Mirandi Riwoe, Danged Black Thing by Eugen Bacon, and Sadvertising by Ennis Ćehić are powerful, inventive, and self-assured short story collections that traverse fractured and contested ground through their often displaced and alienated narrators.' (Introduction)
-
Books Roundup : Hovering, Unlimited Futures, The Burnished Sun, The Writer Laid Bare
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , April 2022;
— Review of Hovering 2022 single work novel ; Unlimited Futures 2022 anthology short story ; The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story ; The Writer Laid Bare : Emotional Honesty in a Writer's Art, Craft and Life 2022 single work autobiography
-
Mirandi Riwoe The Burnished Sun
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 9-15 April 2022;
— Review of The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story'The Burnished Sun follows Mirandi Riwoe’s acclaimed historical novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain (2020), the latter about siblings Ying and Lai Yue, who flee China for the Australian goldfields. Writer and historian Yves Rees uses the term counter-historical to characterise the novel’s placement of marginalised histories at its centre. This energy and ethical drive, along with an exquisite attention to the bruising textures of the world and to those who survive them, is a signature of the short fiction collected in The Burnished Sun.' (Introduction)
-
Books Roundup : Hovering, Unlimited Futures, The Burnished Sun, The Writer Laid Bare
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , April 2022;
— Review of Hovering 2022 single work novel ; Unlimited Futures 2022 anthology short story ; The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story ; The Writer Laid Bare : Emotional Honesty in a Writer's Art, Craft and Life 2022 single work autobiography -
Restless Invention : Three Powerful New Short Story Collections
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June no. 443 2022; (p. 31-32)
— Review of The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story ; Danged Black Thing 2021 selected work short story ; Sadvertising 2022 selected work short story'The Burnished Sun by Mirandi Riwoe, Danged Black Thing by Eugen Bacon, and Sadvertising by Ennis Ćehić are powerful, inventive, and self-assured short story collections that traverse fractured and contested ground through their often displaced and alienated narrators.' (Introduction)
-
Best of 2022 in Australian Reading
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2023;
— Review of This All Come Back Now 2022 anthology short story ; Unlimited Futures 2022 anthology short story ; An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life 2022 selected work short story ; Women I Know 2022 selected work short story ; Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls 2022 selected work short story ; Everything Feels like the End of the World 2022 selected work short story ; The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story ; This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel ; Losing Face 2022 single work novel ; Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay ; People Who Lunch : Essays on Work, Leisure and Loose Living 2022 selected work essay ; The Diplomat 2022 single work novel -
The Darkness That Lurks
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story -
y
Mirandi Riwoe on Finding the Story
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2022
24385302
2022
single work
podcast
interview
'Mirandi Riwoe is the author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain, which won the 2020 Queensland Literary Award – Fiction Book Award and the inaugural ARA Historical Novel Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 2022 she has released The Burnished Sun, a collection of novellas and short stories. Mirandi's work has also appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Griffith Review and Best Summer Stories.' (Introduction)
-
What I Wish I’d Known About: Studying Creative Writing
2022
single work
essay
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , June 2022;